Practical Applications of Eye Tracking Technology

Eye Tracking technology is the process of tracking the direction of gaze of a person in reaction to stimuli. The importance of this technology shouldn’t surprise us, because people’s gaze can tell us exactly what’s the object of their attention, and also understand their underlying intentions. Application of Eye tracking technology measures attention, interest, and arousal, making it a great tool for all kinds of research which directly or indirectly deals with human behaviour. It can be successfully applied in a variety of fields such as Psychology, Medicine, Marketing, Education, Gaming as well as for enhancing human-computer interaction by using the eyes for navigation and controls.

Application of Eye Tracking Technology in Academic and Scientific Research

Without a doubt, the academic and scientific research fields are currently making the most out of eye tracking technology. It is being widely used for cognitive, developmental, experimental and media applications in both psychology and neuroscience.

Using Eye tracking methods in E-learning makes it possible to capture learner behaviour in real-time which is critical for analyzing the performance of these platforms. The data collected via eye-tracking devices indicates the subject’s interest level and attention span and focus. From eye position tracking and indirect measures, such as fixation numbers and duration, gaze position, and blink rate, it is possible to draw information about the respondents’ level of attention, stress, relaxation, problem-solving, proficiency in learning, tiredness or emotions. Eye tracking can help you discover differences in information gathering and learning strategies. It can also help to identify social interaction patterns between teacher and students. Eye tracking is a great tool to study visual attention and social interaction in all learning settings.

The eye tracking methods used to register eye movement to find the direction and targets of a person’s gaze are well in line with the nature of the traditional study conducted for medical research. In various projects, wearable eye tracking equipment was used in experimental psychology and clinical neuroscience to define the link between eye movement and mental disorders. Eye movement holds distinct information that can contribute to health monitoring and assessment, for diseases like Autism, Alzheimer’s disease, (AIDS Dementia Complex), Multiple Sclerosis, Schizophrenia and Dyslexia. In many instances, the viability of adopting this technology for mental health monitoring has been successfully demonstrated.

Gaming Research

Eye tracking has also been introduced to the gaming industry which now enables game developers to get better customer insights into the gaming experience. Such information is invaluable to the game designers as it allows them to modify the games for better user engagement and create features that push the boundaries of reality.

The day is not too far when users will be able to control the game with just their eye movements and take the gaming experience to the next level, all thanks to Eye Tracking.

Simulation

Automotive research has embraced eye tracking glasses for a long time to gauge driver’s visual attention. It helps them to analyze responses both with respect to navigation and layout of dashboards. This insight can be critical to automobile companies in this highly competitive environment where all of them are striving for market leadership.

Sports

Application of Eye tracking technology can better analyse an athlete’s individual performance by identifying a correlation between their area of focus, visual search patterns, hand-eye coordination and the individual’s actions during a game. It can allow us to compare strategies of expert athletes and novices by understanding their gaze patterns which in turn can lead to superior performance. It can help us to identify best practices by studying the heat maps to come up with better training videos and other materials. Once we are able to gauge individual performance, such information can cut down training time significantly as the training programs can then be optimized according to the needs of each athlete which will improve the overall efficiency of the players. With customized training programs, unnecessary injuries can also be prevented.

Virtual Reality

Currently, the field of Virtual Reality is plagued by the limitations of expressions. Integration of Eye Tracking with VR can help augment the research to help develop more real avatars which respond to users’ emotional reactions like blinking. It will significantly enhance the VR experience for customers for allowing avatars to reflect our eye movements.

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